quick fencing post that I mostly wrote last night
Hi, here is one of those omphaloskeptic posts about fencing.
Fencing! Fencing. Much of my life is consumed by fencing. Things that have happened or are happening soon:
Club practice started up, I'm one of the club officers and run part of practice once a week when the coaches can't make it.
I went to a referee clinic and got rated to direct all three weapons.
I finally won my E rating at a local competition.
I've been learning bits and pieces of ASL to help coach a new deaf fencer on my club team.
I've been practicing an average of 10-12 hours a week, woooo.
I also started taking lessons consistently for the first time in basically ever, from a super great coach who I haven't really gelled with yet but who does seem to get what my main technique problems are.
I had a competition last weekend where I went 20-3 and mostly did not have a meltdown and strip-coached and talked to friends from other teams and was awake for 24-fucking-hours between travel and competing and travel again.
High school practices are about to start up again, at which point my personal practice time is going to take a nose-dive and I'll be coaching about 10 hours a week and only practicing between 2 and 4.
Skill-wise, I've had some really clear indicators lately that I'm trending up! The directing rating, and the E, and the 20-3 record. A friend of mine who coaches for another team told his fencers that I was a 'good - not amazing, but competent' fencer, which is extremely accurate and pretty high praise from him. Although I gave him a hard time about it, haha. It can be hard to tell how I'm doing since my benchmarks are other fencers who are ALSO getting better, so the concrete signals help.
Time commitment is a challenge. I don't have time to do all this stuff - or I do, but barely. The more I talk to older fencers, the more I realize that almost everyone, even the very best people, even college coaches and world-class referees, lives a dual life between fencing and their 'real' job. And living that kind of dual-track seems exhausting but also inevitable. I already know that part of my job search when I'm done with my PhD will depend on what universities are hiring near fencing hotspots. Which is worrying, because you honestly don't have that much choice with academic jobs. I guess I'll just play it by ear.
Emotions-wise - ehhh. I'm beginning to figure out that it's always going to be a matter of good and bad days for me. I've had a lot of good days recently and only a couple of bad practices where I just could not deal with how shitty I was feeling. At this most recent competition I was mostly good and having a great time, but apparently I scared a few of the newer fencers by yelling/being super intense. Not sure what to do about that, but the more experienced people said I was fine so maybe it will just have to be part of the competition experience for newbies. I also got really upset after a late 4-5 loss and scratched my face a little (which is a fun new self-harm behavior that I hadn't done before). But I bounced back quickly and finished the competition on a good note. I don't know where that leaves me. I care SO MUCH about fencing, way more than most things I do, and it's definitely where the majority of my emotions end up. Coaching takes me out of it a little, so it may be that as my fencing career trends further into the 'senior team member/strip-coach' area I'll even out more. We'll see! I think mostly I need to refocus from 'I am going to make myself stop being so intense and miserable about fencing' to 'I am going to make sure I can turn around quickly from being intense and miserable and just keep fencing because that will make me feel better.'
I also wrote up 3 emails for my team-mates about how they did and what their next steps should be, ran them past the head coach, and got them ready to send out. That helped me a lot and hopefully it will help them too! Senior team memberrrrr.
I feel like this is a more up-beat post than most I've made about fencing, anyway. So that's trending up too, haha.
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/83018.html. Comment wherever you want.
Fencing! Fencing. Much of my life is consumed by fencing. Things that have happened or are happening soon:
Club practice started up, I'm one of the club officers and run part of practice once a week when the coaches can't make it.
I went to a referee clinic and got rated to direct all three weapons.
I finally won my E rating at a local competition.
I've been learning bits and pieces of ASL to help coach a new deaf fencer on my club team.
I've been practicing an average of 10-12 hours a week, woooo.
I also started taking lessons consistently for the first time in basically ever, from a super great coach who I haven't really gelled with yet but who does seem to get what my main technique problems are.
I had a competition last weekend where I went 20-3 and mostly did not have a meltdown and strip-coached and talked to friends from other teams and was awake for 24-fucking-hours between travel and competing and travel again.
High school practices are about to start up again, at which point my personal practice time is going to take a nose-dive and I'll be coaching about 10 hours a week and only practicing between 2 and 4.
Skill-wise, I've had some really clear indicators lately that I'm trending up! The directing rating, and the E, and the 20-3 record. A friend of mine who coaches for another team told his fencers that I was a 'good - not amazing, but competent' fencer, which is extremely accurate and pretty high praise from him. Although I gave him a hard time about it, haha. It can be hard to tell how I'm doing since my benchmarks are other fencers who are ALSO getting better, so the concrete signals help.
Time commitment is a challenge. I don't have time to do all this stuff - or I do, but barely. The more I talk to older fencers, the more I realize that almost everyone, even the very best people, even college coaches and world-class referees, lives a dual life between fencing and their 'real' job. And living that kind of dual-track seems exhausting but also inevitable. I already know that part of my job search when I'm done with my PhD will depend on what universities are hiring near fencing hotspots. Which is worrying, because you honestly don't have that much choice with academic jobs. I guess I'll just play it by ear.
Emotions-wise - ehhh. I'm beginning to figure out that it's always going to be a matter of good and bad days for me. I've had a lot of good days recently and only a couple of bad practices where I just could not deal with how shitty I was feeling. At this most recent competition I was mostly good and having a great time, but apparently I scared a few of the newer fencers by yelling/being super intense. Not sure what to do about that, but the more experienced people said I was fine so maybe it will just have to be part of the competition experience for newbies. I also got really upset after a late 4-5 loss and scratched my face a little (which is a fun new self-harm behavior that I hadn't done before). But I bounced back quickly and finished the competition on a good note. I don't know where that leaves me. I care SO MUCH about fencing, way more than most things I do, and it's definitely where the majority of my emotions end up. Coaching takes me out of it a little, so it may be that as my fencing career trends further into the 'senior team member/strip-coach' area I'll even out more. We'll see! I think mostly I need to refocus from 'I am going to make myself stop being so intense and miserable about fencing' to 'I am going to make sure I can turn around quickly from being intense and miserable and just keep fencing because that will make me feel better.'
I also wrote up 3 emails for my team-mates about how they did and what their next steps should be, ran them past the head coach, and got them ready to send out. That helped me a lot and hopefully it will help them too! Senior team memberrrrr.
I feel like this is a more up-beat post than most I've made about fencing, anyway. So that's trending up too, haha.
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/83018.html. Comment wherever you want.